


Hurt

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Deja Vu, Estrangement, F/M, Lies, Married Couple, Reconciliation, Secret Relationship, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9700487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: “It’s not a lie.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: An insert for “Tone Death” (8 x 09)

 What have I become

My sweetest friend?

—"Hurt," Nine Inch Nails

* * *

 

It's not a lie. She faces herself in the bathroom mirror, and the high color in her cheeks and the pulse pounding at the base of her throat have that to say.  

She lets the clothes spill from her arms to the counter and studies the goosebump texture of her skin. The flushed rise and fall of her breasts and the fire still flashing in her eyes.  

_Intense_

That's what sneaking around like this is. Having him again after all these weeks. Every touch and breath and _harder, deeper, louder, more, now God, please, yes_ second they can steal is intense. 

She half turns toward the door. Half leaves behind the dark, sensible clothes and her watch and phone and the rest to claim him again. To _have_ him. 

But there really is a meeting with Gates. And it really is a miracle that her damned phone hasn't rung already. And they should be careful. They should be far more careful, secret entrance from the next building over notwithstanding. 

So she dresses when she'd rather not. She sorts out her hair and sees to her makeup. She puts on her game face and steels herself to say goodbye. 

Intense isn’t the word for that. With her forehead against the door and her insides knotting, _intense_ doesn’t begin to cover what it’s like to leave, and her rituals are nothing to it. Deep breaths and a count of ten to fix his smile in her mind’s eye. 

They’re nothing, but the metal of the door handle is growing warm in her hand, and she can’t stand here with her face buried in the softness of his robe and hers, side by side on their back-of-the-door hooks.  

She rouses herself again. Takes one more look in the mirror at the dark fabric of her sweater and the pale cast of her skin, then pushes through the door back into the bedroom. Smiling, because she owes him that, doesn’t she? A light touch and a lascivious _till next time,_ because it’s not a lie. 

She sees him, propped up against the headboard, watching her. She sees the way his eyes travel hungrily down her bare legs and the flash of his teeth. 

_Intense_

It’s not a lie, but the coat is spilling from her arms. The phone is falling from her hand and her skirt is rucking up as she clumsily scales his body from the foot of the bed upward. 

“I hate this,” she whispers, pressing her open mouth to the warm skin of his throat. 

He laughs. A startled rumble that travels through his body, then hers. “Hate? Holding out for a fourth agenda item, Captain?” 

He laughs, but there’s a frown gathering between his brows. A painful breath that catches high up in his chest as he slides his fingers into her hair and tips her face up to the light. 

“I hate this,” she tells him again, unflinching, even though t he tears gathering on her lashes make her cheeks burn. Unflinching, even though there’s hollow voice inside that tells her she’s making it worse. That she did this in the first place, and she has no right. No _right_ , but she tells him again. “I hate leaving.” 

_I know . . ._

She stops the words with a savage, sorrowful kiss. She runs roughshod over whatever comfort he has to offer. She presses her body to his and truth spills out over his skin. 

“I hate not being with you every minute.” She rakes her fingers through his hair. Drags her palm over his cheek, like she’s committing the feel of him to memory. “It’s like . . .” 

Her voice fails her. The words she’s never been any good at fail her, but she owes him more than that. More than _I’m sorry_ falling dead and useless between them in the afternoon light. 

“Like a hole in my heart.” She catches his hand and presses it to his chest. “It hurts. All the time.”

He’s quiet for a long while. His hands are still on her body, and he’s quiet long enough that stillness settles through her. Not peace. Nothing like that, but grief. Loss. Fear. Not for his life, alone, for _their_ life. For coffee gone cold on the nightstand and the mess he leaves in the bathroom, every time. For the shiver that wakes her when he rolls over in his sleep, grunting like a  bear and stealing the covers. For the nudge of his hip against hers in the kitchen and the silly, courtly way he holds the door. For every mundane joy and petty annoyance of life together. Real life. 

“It hurts,” she says again. 

She means to say again, but it’s lost somewhere. Anything it might have meant gets lost in the soft kisses he presses into her skin. The soft kisses that stray from the corner of her mouth to wind along the salt-silver of her tear tracks. 

Anything it might have meant gets lost in a truth just learned. 

“It hurts,” he murmurs, and it’s not a lie. “I know it hurts.” 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It feels something like a gift when she says it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended hurt to be a short one-shot. It grew this second chapter, which is an insert for _Fidelis ad Mortem_ (8 x 15).

“The needle tears a hole 

The old familiar sting  

Try to kill it all away  

But I remember everything”

  
“Hurt”—Nine Inch Nails

* * *

 

 

It feels something like a gift when she says it. 

_Can you do me favor . . ._

_. . . Anything . . ._

_. . . Stop talking._

When she pours him a drink and her a drink and him, ad infinitum, it's like a gift someone he used to be might've wanted. 

She undresses. That's inevitable. She flicks her fingers at his hands, imperious, and he sets to work on his own. That's inevitable, too. Acquiescence.  

_Anything_

The kiss, when it comes, is hard. She loses patience, half in, half out of her blouse, and it's swift and sudden and hard. Not angry. There's too little mercy in it for that. It's merely insistent. The next domino falling, and it takes with it sleeves and zippers and silky straps. It takes with it his belt and her heels, one at a time. 

Rocks glasses thud and tip. Amber spills across the low table and the cut glass catches the light. It fractures another kind of gold and paints the ceiling. It paints the white brick in passing as she falls. As she takes the two of them down to the chill, supple leather of the chair. 

She wants him. Tooth and claw and tongue burning with alcohol, she wants him. He wants her, and there's no reason that should surprise him. No reason at all that the slick heat between her legs, the aching hardness between his, should send his eyes flying open in shock. 

It does, though. The downward grind of her hips and the answering rise of his own. The shiver that chases over his skin wherever her tongue darts out for a quick, wicked taste. The rapid stutter of his heart against his ribs and breath that won't come quick enough. _Want._ It shocks him how perfectly they go through the motions. How effortlessly she finds her release. How quickly his own traitorous body follows in hollow pantomime. 

How soon it starts all over again. It shocks him. 

* * *

His head is spinning. Whisky and this frantic, clawing _want_ take their toll. They fall back to the bed. Retreat, unthinking—unmeaning, maybe—to their separate corners of a dark, flat expanse. The pillows are gone along the way. The comforter and high-thread-count sheets. They're all gone along the way, and there's just the dark, flat expanse of the fitted sheet between them. His head is spinning.  

Hers is, too. He knows the signs. The back of her hand across her eyes. The arc of her wrist and the bloodless half moons she's pressing into her own palm. He stares blindly up. His chest heaves. Sweat chills him as it cools on his skin. 

He should move. Cover her. Go and leave her in peace. He should do _something_ , but he stares blindly up. 

She stops him when he does move. A minute later. An hour. He doesn't know, but her hand snakes out. Her fingers circle his wrist, biting. Adamant. 

Memory seizes him. A moment so long ago, it's almost mythic. Someone he used be, someone he thought she was and chaos all around them. Adrenaline and desire out in the wide open of a New York street. 

_Why? So I could be another one of your conquests?_

_Or I could be one of yours._

He doesn't know what it has to do with anything. The incipient joy of certainty. Knowing what they could be. What they would. He doesn't know what it can possibly have to do with this aching, passionless silence. He doesn't want to know.  

"Cold," he says, finding the will somewhere. He sees her nod out of the corner of his eye. Feels her retreat and wishes he hadn't said anything. 

He's helpless, on his feet as he looks down at the far-flung bedding. At the haphazard pile of pillows he'd usually be fussing with, even now. Propping them up behind her. Smoothing one out for the two of them to share, because she's sloppy and fond in the afterglow. Because she almost always draws the sheet up high, fists under her chin, nose to nose with him as she drifts off to sleep. Murmuring that she loves him.

That's how she is, but not now. 

"Cold." 

He snaps out of it. Remembers his duty, and he's frantic about it suddenly. A clumsy blur of motion, as he snaps the sheet high and settles it over her.  Repeats the motion with the thin blanket. With the comforter, and then there's the pillows. Then he's stuck again, clutching hers to his middle. Standing awkwardly over her side of the bed, and she's staring up at him, wide-eyed. 

 _Afraid,_ he'd say if he didn't know better. He might not. 

"Me?" she says, and he doesn't know what she means. It's the first word she's said in however long it's been. A minute. An hour, and he's too startled to have any idea what she means. "Cold." She's explaining. She's trying to explain. "You meant me."

He nods. It's obvious. It's ritual. She's always cold. He always fusses over her. Except this isn't always.

She reaches up to take the pillow from him. Snatches it and shoves it behind her body. He nods again, weary suddenly. Dead weary as he drags around to his side of the bed and slides beneath the sheet. 

He flicks the light off, unasked. Unanswered for a minute or an hour, maybe.  He doesn't know. Unanswered until her fingers creep across the dark, flat expanse of sheet between them to tangle with his.  

"I was," she says. "I have been." She lapses into silence. 

 _Lapses,_ he thinks, listening hard. It's a funny word. A cutting, dangerous word. She lapses, but her voice comes to him again in the dark. 

"Without you, I've been cold the whole time." 

It's the last thing she says, flat on her back, and staring blindly up. It's the last thing before her breath evens out. Before she's heavy with sleep, her fingers still tangled with his, and it's something like a gift. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. This is miserable.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This isn’t what I wanted it to be. I started it in the middle of the night, and whatever the moment was, it got away from me. Still. 850 words.


End file.
